Ronda Rousey: The UFC’s Biggest Superstar?

It’s hard to describe the general feeling surrounding last week’s UFC 157 event.

I was in Anaheim to cover the event for CNN/Bleacher Report. I’ve covered countless fights at this point, and they largely blend together. There are big fights that rise above that feeling, like the Silva vs. Sonnen 2 bout last July and Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir 2 at UFC 100. But generally speaking, fight week is fight week. There are few surprises.

But last week was a revelation, and it was all thanks to Ronda Rousey. Far more than any other event I can remember, Rousey’s debut just felt like a big deal. She attracted far more media attention than any other UFC fighter in the history of the company, and that includes Brock Lesnar.

She was on the front page of major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times. She was all over ESPN. My employers at CNN even got into the Rousey act, and I went on CNN television several times before and after the fight to discuss her potential and what she means to the sport.

She attracted a different type of audience to the open workouts. She was a rock star everywhere she went. And when fight night finally came, and she walked to the arena to the strains of Joan Jett’s “Reputation,” the arena was buzzing more than any other I can remember.

The way she won her fight, by going through adversity and still finishing with her signature armbar in the first round, made her an even bigger superstar. When Liz Carmouche tapped out to end the fight, the crowd erupted. Mike Goldberg noted that Rousey might be the UFC’s biggest star, and for once, it wasn’t hyperbole. Goldberg might be right.

We won’t know pay per view numbers for a few more days, but all indications are that it was a huger success. The UFC internally hoped for 300,000 buys, and based on what my own sources have told me, the buyrate will blow that out of the water. It will do over 450,000 buys, and there are certain indications that it may go well above that number.

Is Rousey the UFC’s biggest star? Maybe. Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones can all lay some claim to that title, but Rousey may be bigger than all of them when it comes to popular culture. My mom knows almost nothing about the UFC, and she knows who Ronda Rousey is. Across the country, sports bars were filled with fans who generally never turn out to watch UFC events, even when they’re on free television.

That’s the kind of thing Rousey brings to the UFC and to mixed martial arts as a whole. She may not be loved by the hardcore fans, but the hardcore fans are a very tiny percentage of the UFC’s potential audience. If Rousey can continue to capture the imagination of fans who normally don’t watch the UFC, it will only be a matter of time before she’ the unquestioned biggest star in the sport. She’s already the most marketable.